I am technically "boss" of the family which I am carrying along-but I am grateful to know that it is only technically - that the real authority rests on the other side of the house. It is placed there by a beneficent Providence, who foresaw before I was born, or, if he did not, he has found it out since - that I am not in any way qualified to travel alone.

Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows

If you must be indiscrete, be discrete in your indiscretion.

It is a mistake that there is no bath that will cure people's manners, but drowning would help.

The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

Comedy keeps the heart sweet.

Literature is well enough, as a time-passer, and for the improvement and general elevation and purification of mankind, but it has no practical value.